Antitrust Probe Launched into Google by EU

The European Commission announced today that it had started an investigation into Google for suspected anticompetitive behavior in the online advertising technology sector. According to the EC announcement, the formal antitrust investigation will look into whether Google has broken EU competition rules by favoring its own online display advertising technology services in the so-called ‘ad tech’ supply chain at the expense of competitors, advertisers, and online publishers.

It will look at whether Google is distorting competition by limiting third-party access to user data for advertising purposes on websites and apps while keeping such information for its own use. The probe involves Chrome and Android. The EC said it would look into Google announced plans to prohibit the placement of third-party cookies on Chrome and replace them with the Privacy Sandbox set of tools.

It includes the effects on online display advertising and online display advertising intermediation markets, as well as Google announced plans to prohibit the placement of third-party ‘cookies’ on Chrome and replace them with the Privacy Sandbox set of tools. FLoC, or Federated Learning of Cohorts, is a solution that would replace third-party cookies for advertising reasons in Google Privacy Sandbox.

Google said, “Thousands of European businesses use our advertising products to reach new customers and fund their websites every single day. They choose them because they’re competitive and effective. We will continue to engage constructively with the European Commission to answer their questions and demonstrate the benefits of our products to European businesses and consumers.”

According to the company, created the Privacy Sandbox to replace third-party cookies with viable privacy-first solutions that will enable publishers and advertisers to prosper while simultaneously safeguarding people’s privacy as they travel across the web. Because it records groups of people rather than individual users, Google claims that its proposed system will protect user privacy better than current techniques.